The Best Rums to Buy for All Your Summer Drinking Needs

It is August and especially hot—almost as if our climate has been systematically changing over the years?—and it’s time for a daiquiri. Or a piña colada, or some slushy drink served in a coconut. So maybe you’re googling for the “best rum in a daiquiri,” and, on seeing the pages of answers and litany of bottles and stupefying range of tasting notes, you realize there’s a whole lot of stuff out there about rum, and you know very little of it, and you just wanted a good drink but are now utterly adrift in the choppy waters of ignorance.

Shannon Mustipher is here with a life preserver. And it’s attached to a party boat.

“All tequila comes from Mexico and all Scotch comes from Scotland,” she says. “But rum is made in over 90 countries across the world, each with their own influences and histories. You won’t find that range in any other spirit.”

Mustipher is the beverage director of Glady’s in Brooklyn, which Luke Cage fans may recognize as “Gwen’s,” the Jamaican hangout of the Styler gang. She’s also the author of the forthcoming Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails (Rizzoli, spring 2019), and has used her platform behind the stick and the page to evangelize about a spirit that’s rich with heritage but poorly understood. Here are her tips for finding a better bottle, whether you just need something for your dark and stormy or you’re looking for the fanciest stuff the world of rum has to offer.

Know your styles

At first glance, rum categories look a lot like tequila: you have clear young bottles and darker aged versions. That’s true, kinda, but unlike other clear spirits, most white rums have actually spent some time aging in oak barrels to mellow out their fire. (They’re filtered clear before bottling.) As for dark rums: darker colors don’t always mean older spirits, and since these styles are often blended with multiple distillates from a range of years, age statements aren’t always straightforward.

Instead, Mustipher explains, pay attention to the rum’s country of origin, and do a little googling if you have to and see what language people speak there—and what its colonizing history is. Today’s rum is inexorably tied to the imperial history of three European powers and the particulars of their drinking habits. Rums from former English colonies like Jamaica and British Guyana are made in, you guessed it, the English style. The same goes for former Spanish colonies, like Puerto Rico and Cuba, and French, like Haiti and Martinique.

English-style rums are distilled from molasses, then usually blended and aged in oak barrels. They’re typically heavy-bodied with a dark, spicy character and notes of chocolate, banana, and burnt sugar. “A lot of British rum drinks were served as punches,” Mustipher says, “and the rums needed to be really flavorful to shine through all the other ingredients” like citrus juice, demerara sugar, and spices.

Spanish-style rums skew smoother and more balanced. They’re often distilled in column stills, for a lighter spirit, and blended in a solera system like Spain’s beloved sherry, mixing separately aged vintages into a single consistent product. “With Spanish rum, it’s often about stripping the character out of the base spirit, then adding flavor back in through the aging and blending,” Mustipher explains. That’s why Spanish-style white rums can taste as crisp as vodka (see: Bacardi), and why dark sipping rums develop honey and ripe-fruit flavors with the intensity of a fortified wine. “It’s less about the raw product than the blending craft of the house.”

Unlike English and Spanish rums, which are both distilled from sugar products molasses, French-style rhum agricole is distilled from fresh sugarcane. As the name suggests, “you get a sense of the natural product and the terroir of a place,” Mustipher says. These rums are grassy, funky, and fresh-tasting, even in smoother aged expressions, and are often bottled at high proof for an extra punch of sugarcane flavor and rich body. Those are the ones Mustipher loves: “Don’t even bother with something at 80 proof, it’s not going to do the style justice. Look for something 100 proof or above.”

And how to use them

If you’re drinking your rum straight, seek out whatever makes you happy. But for mixing, Mustipher prefers to stock her bar with a wide range of English-style rums, which are traditionally pot-distilled for an extra weighty body that stands out nicely in tiki drinks. She’ll often combine two or three separate bottles into one cocktail to get a balance of flavors and aromatics.

But not all rum drinks need to be complicated. If all you need is a bottle of white rum to whip up a pitcher of daiquiris, Mustipher recommends ditching the common English and Spanish stuff in favor of a rhum agricole. French-style white rum just tastes a whole lot...more, and emphasizes the tropical character of the drink.

Agricole is especially at home in the national drink of Martinique, the ti’ punch (pronounced tee paunch and short for petit punch). Like a daiquiri, the ti’ punch is all about the elemental blend of lime, sugar, and rum, but the end result is more delicate and nuanced so the rum’s character can shine. Mustipher is quick to point out some differences in the process that most American bartenders still don’t understand: the drink has no ice, should only involve a bit of lime, and is best made with sirop de canne, a syrup made from fresh cane juice. She starts by cutting a circle off a lime—to get less juice than a full wedge, which would turn the drink muddy and sour—and squeezing the oils and a bit of juice into the glass, then stirs in a barspoon of syrup and two ounces of rhum agricole. Sip room temperature for your own personal Harry Belafonte moment.

Now drink these

When it comes to rum, more is more—that is, it pays to have a lot of bottles you like around for blending purposes, and for understanding the nuances of a truly globe-spanning spirit. Here’s a few starter bottles to try, including some of Mustipher’s favorites from her own bar.

Damoiseau Rhum
If you want to get what this whole Frenchy “agricole” thing is about, Mustipher stans this classic rum house in Guadeloupe. You want the 110-proof white version, which is less about heat than the weighty viscosity you get from a high-proof spirit. Try either the white or aged expressions in a ti’ punch.

Paranubes
Call it rhum if you have to, or aguardiente, or even Mexican moonshine. This bottle from Oaxaca, distilled from fresh sugarcane juice and bottled at 108 proof, is shockingly smooth and easy-drinking. The natural brightness and vegetal accents are right at home in a daiquiri and killer with a splash of tonic water.

Hamilton Worthy Black
With a price tag under $30, you might expect this English rum from Guyana to be a bit basic, but distiller Ed Hamilton, a giant in the rum world, knows what he’s doing. “It’s not a starter rum,” Mustipher says. “There’s a funkier, more traditional flavor that’s characteristic of the early ways of making rum, in which the molasses was sometimes mixed with fresh cane juice and fermented for weeks, instead of hours like modern houses do.” That means bold, punchy flavors of dark fruit and chocolate with a kick of cigar smoke.

Wray and Nephew Overproof
Some tiki cocktails specifically call for overproof rum to deliver an extra punch booze with minimal dilution. On such occasions, pick up a bottle of Wray and Nephew, Jamaican overproof style that’s shockingly sippable despite its 63% alcohol percentage. Its rich funk and cooling tropical-fruit kick bring welcome banana and citrus flavors to a classic mai tai, and it’s disastrously good with tonic water, lime, and a splash of bitters. Just don’t try to operate anything more complicated than a hammock after drinking one.

Foursquare
Another English rum line from another rum macher, Richard Seale, a third-generation distiller “whose mission is to return rum to its place as significant player in the world of high-end sipping spirits. It shows the craft of English-style rum. They don’t add any sugar, there’s a true age statement, and even some unblended vintages of pure single rums.” Premium bottles like this are really best for sipping solo, but have lots of mixing potential.

Facundo Exquisito
Bacardi’s super-premium Facundo line shows off what Spanish-style blending can really do. The Exquisito is made with a range of seven- to 23-year-old rums that sit nice and heavy on your tongue as you sip. Imagine fresh baked banana bread with a cup of coffee and jar of candied figs; now blend all those into a smoothie, make it not disgusting, and you have this exceptionally balanced bottle for sipping...or splashing over vanilla ice cream.

Navazos Palazzi Cask Strength
A boutique Spanish bottle well worth the $100 price tag. Ample time in olorosso sherry casks has given it a viscous, syrupy body, but instead of cloying sweetness, it’s actually one of the driest-tasting spirits on this list. There’s jolts of smoke and leather and burnt nuts, then a dynamic aftertaste that lingers in your throat. Weird rum. Good rum.

Max Falkowitz is a food and travel writer for The New York Times, Saveur, Playboy, New York magazine’s Grubstreet, and elsewhere. He’s also the co-author of theDumpling Galaxy Cookbookwith Helen You.